Re: The effect of wait times on mortality in Canada, a study by the Fraser Institute
The Fraser Institute is using scare tactics again to promote private health care in Canada. Well, if private health care is such a wonderful thing, why is America’s system of private health care such a dismal failure?
Depending on which figures a person might choose to use, between 200,000 and 400,000 people die in American hospitals every year due to poor medical practices (misuse of drugs; poor sanitation; poor surgeries, etc.).
America’s health-care system is a $2 trillion cottage industry that benefits doctors, medical insurance companies, hospitals/clinics, pharmaceutical companies, and the lawyers who try to protect from thousands of lawsuits every year brought on by consumers who are paying twice as much for health care compared to Canada, most western European nations, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Over 60 per cent of all bankruptcies in America are attributed to medical costs. Besides the inefficiencies and incompetence of the medical profession in America, fraud is endemic there as well, and Florida tops the nation for medical fraud.
I would suggest Canadians read the book The Healing of America by T.R. Reid. If anyone has any doubts about his data/information, I would also suggest further studies on this subject produced by the Commonwealth Fund, the Harvard School of Medicine, the World Health Organization, FactCheck.org, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
George E Thatcher
Trochu